


Meta: Sherlock in Episode 1 of Series 3 - Character Regression or Progression?

by Kizzia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character progression, Episode 1 The Empty Hearse, Gen, Meta, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, characterisation, head canon, thoughts on Sherlock's behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 04:37:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kizzia/pseuds/Kizzia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My interpretation of Sherlock's behaviour in Episode 1 of Series 3, with a few thoughts on John thrown in for good measure.</p><p>This will not make sense if you haven't seen the episode and contains major spoilers - you've been warned!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meta: Sherlock in Episode 1 of Series 3 - Character Regression or Progression?

Having attended the premiere back in December and thus been stewing about this for weeks, I want to share my thoughts on Sherlock's behaviour and characterisation in The Empty Hearse now I've had a chance to re-watch it.

Initially I really wasn't happy with what he said and did in the train “car” but, the more I thought about it and about his behaviour throughout this episode, the more I came to realise why the OOC bits actually weren’t OOC at all. Now I feel that it was a mix of character development and character regression, both of which are legitimate given what we learn about where Sherlock has been and what he’s been doing during the hiatus.  
  
I’m going to talk about the regression first of all, which I feel stems from the fact that Sherlock has spent the past two years essentially alone. He wasn’t in contact with Mycroft (plausible deniability I presume, as if taking out Moriarty’s web had been officially sanctioned, Sherlock wouldn’t have needed to go in the first place, Mycroft could have just sent MI6 out) and all of his interactions with other people would have been undertaken in the persona of whoever he was pretending to be that day. He lost the humanising influence of John and, between spending the majority of his waking hours not even being himself and the effects of torture (because the way he reacted to that beating, I’m absolutely certain it wasn’t the first time that sort of thing had happened) he did lose touch with reality.  
  
Now, I know that what I’m about to say has more to do with my head canon as to how Sherlock thinks and the level to which he’s happy to accept and feel his own emotions, so I’m not expecting everyone to agree with this, but what I think he did over those two years was clung to his memories of those eighteen months he spent with John, his first true friend (well, the first person he admitted to being a friend – Greg, Molly, Mike, Angelo and Mrs Hudson were too but he chose not to acknowledge them as such). When he needed a respite, when he needed a reason to keep going, when he had to disassociate from what was being done to him, he went back to that time in his head. He did this so often he managed to convince himself that, when he finally returned, everything would be exactly as it was because that’s what he’d been living for.  
  
That moment with Mycroft when Sherlock basically dismisses John having a life without him isn’t a breathtakingly awful dismissal of John as an autonomous human; it’s a show of weakness. He genuinely cannot countenance John having moved on because if he’d allowed that possibility into his head at any point over the past two years he would have cracked and he’s still not able to process it at that point, even though he’s back. He cannot bear to think the thing he’s been striving to return to may not be there at all anymore, so he covers the moment with bluster, rudeness and arrogance – the standard Sherlockian armour.  
  
He remains in denial during the whole of the protracted first reunion. He can see, on a completely dispassionate level, that John is rightly furious (you can see the terror in his eyes in the scene) but he can’t accept it; for once Sherlock is thinking with his heart rather than his head. He’s so desperate for John to welcome him back with open arms, has spent so long convincing himself that John will take one look at him and their entire friendship will be restored, that he can’t adjust to reality. Thus we get the most appalling, juvenile behaviour and frankly awful jokes because he can’t actually react properly. If he did, that would make John’s anger and hurt real and he’s not ready for that.  
  
As an aside, I think a lot of John’s fury, especially the final head butting and his attack on the “book seller” at the surgery, is born out of John being furious with _himself_ , not Sherlock. He’s furious that a large part of him wanted to forgive Sherlock there and then, because Sherlock was right – he has missed Sherlock, the thrill of the chase, and it being just them against the world. He’s fighting down the part of him that simply wants to tell Sherlock it’s okay, he forgives him, and that they can go back to how they were. He’s angry because he knows a) he’s been changed enough by the hurt of losing Sherlock that it might not be possible to regain their relationship just as it was and b) he shouldn’t want to go back to it being just them, because he has Mary now, he loves her and he isn’t willing to give that up.

John is, on some levels, less able to handle his emotions than Sherlock (if they are emotions solely tied to him and not emotions on behalf of other people, that is) and this is just another case in point – it’s easier to stay angry at Sherlock and fume about how badly he’s been treated than it is to acknowledge that everything he wants from his life now that Sherlock back _and_ he has Mary, might not be possible. I should also imagine that he wants Sherlock to hurt the way he’s been hurting – not a noble sentiment by any means but a very human one and something I’m sure every single one of us has experienced at some point.  
  
By the time Sherlock has accepted that he got it really wrong, he’s pissed John off to a degree that even he can see John needs time to adjust to the reality of the situation. But he _has_ realised, and in that realisation his character grows. I’m saying this because I read his day with Molly as him trying to get right with her what he got wrong with John (not that he could do what he does with Molly with John, just that he has thought about what would be the best way to thank Molly and then gone and done it, rather than just assuming she knows what she means to him and simply carrying on regardless). The fact that the whole time he’s working with Molly he can hear John in his head berating him - when in reality John has never, ever, said any of those things to him - only stresses that he does realise just what an idiot he’s been.

He treated John like his conscience from the word go and, finally, it’s kicked back in again and is telling him what he did wrong. Those words in his head weren’t really about what he was doing at the crime scene, but what he’d done the night he revealed himself to John. I don’t think we’ve ever really witnessed Sherlock tell himself off for his behaviour before in such a significant way and that, as far as I’m concerned, is a huge step forward.  
  
This new understanding of who he is as a person, and how that is tied to his relationships with others, was also brilliantly illustrated by the ‘deductions’ game between Sherlock & Mycroft. Seriously, I want to kiss Mark Gatiss for turning the jibe Mycroft made in Scandal - ‘Sex doesn’t alarm me’ ‘How would you know?’ - on its head and using it to show that Sherlock is actually better adjusted as a human being than Mycroft. For those four words, uttered with such quiet sincerity, show Sherlock has learnt, to a degree, how to accept his differences from the rest of the world and knows how much he’s getting, personally, from understanding that. That is a huge step forward for him!  
  
Then we have John’s kidnapping and - leaving aside the fact that Mary (whom I feel adoration for, and intrigue about, in equal measure) understands skip codes instantly and goes straight to Sherlock when she realises John’s in danger without so much as a minutes hesitation - Sherlock’s reaction illustrated just what John means to him. Stealing a motorbike (he doesn’t normally break the law so obviously), the fear in his voice when he said he didn’t know what was happening and his shouts for John as he was running towards the bonfire (insert obligatory “check your bonfire for hedgehog jokes” here), and the way he just ran at a fire, moving burning wood with his hands, heedless of his own safety; all this shows that he cares for John more than he cares for himself. I have to say, out of Mary and Sherlock, I think Sherlock actually sounded the more panicked at the situation. There was certainly no Sherlockian armour on display in any of these scenes.  
  
I also found it very interesting that Sherlock made negligible headway on the terrorist case until John had turned up and they started taking about it together. Then, after days of “I can’t see any patterns” Sherlock’s brain kicked into gear and he figured it out practically straight away. The co-dependency that defined their relationship pre-fall seems to be as strong as ever; John certainly looked much happier and more at ease working with Sherlock than he had at the surgery the day before he was kidnapped, despite the fact that there was still an awkwardness between the two of them at that point.  
  
Yet still there is the problem of the apparent emotional manipulation and barefaced lying Sherlock did in the train “car”, and John’s reaction to it. If you take it at face value both of them are OOC and it is a huge regression; for each of them individually _and_ for their relationship. Except I don’t think it’s meant to be taken at face value. I think we’re meant to apply everything we’ve just been shown about Sherlock’s growth as a person, and John’s longing to try and recapture how things were but not being willing to just give Sherlock a get-out-of-jail-free card, and use it to put their actions into context.  
  
John thought he was about to die because of a situation Sherlock had put him in. It was an emotionally charged scene and, thanks both to the situation and the physical location, completely separated from the realities of every day life. It was a moment in time that could be carved out and treated, afterwards, almost as if it never happened. Sherlock was very aware of the possibilities that offered.

He needed John to forgive him and he could see, had seen from the moment John turned up at 221B (which, incidentally, is why I think he kicked his parents out so fast), that John wanted to forgive him. He also wanted a way to say all the things to John that would stick in his throat if he attempted to voice them in 221B or any other ‘normal’ place. Sherlock saw a chance to resolve everything and he took it.

Yes, it was manipulative but it wasn’t manipulation purely for Sherlock’s benefit. As John said, he doesn’t find it easy to talk about his feelings, doesn’t like confronting his own emotions head on (the army doesn’t exactly encourage emotional outbursts and to lead men successfully you have to set your own feelings aside) so Sherlock offered him a way to say what he truly felt.

There is also the fact that if John hadn’t really, truly, wanted to forgive Sherlock he wouldn’t have said it. Thinking you’re about to die really exposes your priorities and tends to make you truthful, in case you are about to be judged by a higher power (and I think it can safely be assumed, given the ‘please God let me live’, that John has at least a passing belief in a deity).  
  
The other thing Sherlock was very aware of was that once the moment had passed - once they’d said what they really meant and how they really felt - and he revealed to John that they weren’t about to die after all, that it would be too overwhelming for them both if the situation weren’t somehow closed off. He chose to do that by treating it all a joke, because he’s still not emotionally mature and humour, however puerile, has an easy appeal; taking the piss doesn’t require any emotional weightlifting at all, plus it happens to be something a lot of soldiers do to defuse emotionally charged situations in the field and thus would be something John was familiar with. This approach also offered John, should he have wanted it, the opportunity to take his words back altogether.

Yes, it looked cruel but I think the saying “being cruel to be kind” is apt here, especially since, from John’s reaction to it, it’s obvious he realised just what Sherlock had done and why. He started laughing not because he thought it was funny that Sherlock had lied to him but because he found it amusing that two grown men actually needed the threat of death and being surrounded by explosives to tell each other what they really thought. He was laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.  
  
You only have to look at how they are with each other at the end of the episode – comfortable, laughing, John feeling able to call Sherlock out on loving being in the limelight, Sherlock admitting (albeit obliquely) that he isn’t quite sure who he is any more, John feeling comfortable telling Sherlock he’s asked for a miracle and Sherlock telling John he’d been there at the graveyard and heard John ask – to see that they needed their cathartic moment and that it worked. They can move forward now, together. It may not have been a conventional moment but since when have either of them been conventional where the other is concerned?  
  
This wasn’t the reunion I imaged we would see and it certainly isn’t the way I would have written it (you only have to look at the volume of reunion fic I posted last year to know that) but it did the job and, to me at least, it both made sense and gave them a sound footing for rebuilding their friendship and recapturing the old magic under new circumstances. Actually it did more than make sense, it made me very, very happy and I am most excited to see how their partnership progresses in the next two episodes.

**Author's Note:**

> If this doesn't make sense, I apologise, but I needed to share my thoughts on this just to get it out of my brain! I also want to know if anyone else sees it like this, or has any more sensible explanations.
> 
> Note edited on 5th January to add that, having watched The Sign of Three, I stand by every word above and am grinning like a complete idiot at how wonderfully Sherlock showed he has grown up and grasped his emotions.


End file.
